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REWIND™ is an easy to use data storage application to archive all your digital assets permanently to Blu-ray disc. We give you full control over your Blu-ray hardware. REWIND has the ability to finish your archive on your schedule. We built REWIND with a unique Finish Later feature, to pause your archive mid-burn and let you finish the archive later, picking up right where you left off.

REWIND Archiving software runs on both PC and Mac computers. The Finish Later feature demonstrated below is only available with REWIND. No other Blu-ray burning software to-date has such control of burning Blu-ray discs.

That is exactly what I asked myself about a month before my Playstation 3 hard drive crashed on me. While I have always been cautious about my computer back-ups and archiving precious documents I never spent time thinking about all the media files I keep on my PS3. Then one day my Playstation 3 hard drive crashed and all my content was gone! I had years of movies, music and photos accumulated and it was now all gone. I was upset about this and wondered why there was not a very easy way to back up your Playstation 3.

So the next day I came into the DIGISTOR offices and spoke to some of our design engineers wondering why there was not a simple and inexpensive way to backup your Playstation 3? It ends up our awesome engineering team already had a solution they had been using internally and testing was nearly complete! There had been a lot of talk about the value of an external media and backup drive for Playstation 3, but we were not sure of the markets interest level of such a product. I asked our lab for one of their prototypes and sent some home with our employees to use. The conclusion was that this DIGISTOR Playstation 3 hard drive was very easy to use and we thought our customers would also enjoy the ability to easily back-up their entire PS3 operating system. Once we had completed our development process we put the new product for sale online and at a few of our distributors to see if our customers agreed. We were pleasantly surprised to see how many people had the same problem as I did and with no other easy-to-use inexpensive solution on the market, our PS3 backup drive took off!

You can now back up your entire PS3 using the Playstation backup utility to the DIGISTOR™ Hard Drive for PS3 and also play back video files – any standard or high definition Divx or MPEG files (with no copy protection and < 4GB). Completely portable powering off of USB with no A/C adapters needed.

View photos and images using the PS3 Photo album rendering system, as well as Listen to your audio files, complete with album art (files with no copy protection).

When we first released this product a few years back, it was just an idea our engineers thought would help a few people. Now we have extended the models to include Xbox 360 and PS3 both at 500GB & 1TB models based on customer demand. This is a very easy to use product that will give you an extra layer of security for all of your media files stored on your gaming device, and we learned something very important: We learned to build products we think are cool and solve a problem, regardless of how much perceived value is in such a solution. Do yourself a favor and make sure and take care to back-up all your media files or your entire PS3 OS before that hard drive crashes!

The holidays have come and gone and if you are like me that means plenty of new photos and home video from family gatherings, parties and travels. For most of us the end of the Holiday season also means it time for some New Year’s resolutions. Well we are a few weeks into January now and I’ve already broken most of my resolutions, but one that you must not break is to finally backup and archive all of your photos, video and data.

We hear so many horror stories from people who have lost all of their photos, videos or other personal data because they were not properly backed up or archived. There is no shortage of backup products available on the market today, so there is really no excuse to not have some sort of protection in place for your valuable data and files.

With so many available options to back up your data, choosing the right solution can be overwhelming. The most important decision to make is simply to not procrastinate and do something! Whether you decide to use an external hard drive, flash drive, online backup provider or RAID solution, it is imperative that you perform regular backups for continuous protection of your latest data.

If you’re a Pocket Camera user you may have noticed over the past few years you’ve used your digital camera less and your cell phone more. I know it’s true of myself. My iPhone camera is always with me, synced effortlessly with my PC, and backs up to iCloud. When I do use my Casio Exilim or Olympus pocket cameras I often times don’t sync these with my computer for days after the event.

We’ve seen a few WiFi pocket cameras hit the market, but CES 2013 shows that we are about to see a lot more, with nearly every manufacturer offing WiFi model cameras. You may be sucked back into using your digital pocket camera if it easily backed up to your PC or Mac over WiFi. Using a digital camera with WiFi and a good backup or archive program will make sure you can enjoy the original pics snapped and keep you using your pocket cam for more than large outings or events.

As these cameras continue to adapt new technology, you’ll see similarities with your digital pocket cam and your cell phone with apps. We area always looking for easier ways to take, sync, share, archive and enjoy our pictures.

No doubt you’ve heard about Instagram and how they are planning on using users data according to its new privacy policy. Instagram, the media, and the users are in a cyber-argument over this topic, but at the end of the day it is your personal choice where you’d like your data. Using Instagram as a photo sharing method is great, but hoping to also use it as an archive of your photos doesn’t work out so well.

Whether you decide to keep your account open or not, we at DIGISTOR thought we’d let you know there is a way to download all your Instagram files to your PC or Mac, then archive them to Blu-ray disc for safe keeping.

Using instaport.me you can download all your Instagram photos to your computer in a single .zip file. You can unzip this file in your photos folder so you can easily view them. Also using REWIND you are now able to select the photos you’d like archived to Blu-ray disc. It’s simple and secure!

Side note: instaport.me is being hammered right now, and may be very slow at responding. Give it some time to settle, and then export and archive away!instaport.me has opened up secondary servers for overflow and is able to give you your Instagram photos within a few minutes of request!

Cloud backup, external hard drive, USB drive, tape or optical drive; it’s easy to be confused with so many options for backing up your data and files.

There are pros and cons to every backup solution, but if want to permanently backup your photos, video, music and other data then archiving to recordable Blu-ray is the clear choice. Here are 5 reasons why:

Cost – Blu-ray drive prices have come down significantly over the past few years, but more importantly the media prices are now as low as $.04 per GB. Not too bad for a permanent data storage.

Longevity – High quality Blu-ray discs have a hard coat, scratch resistant material and can provide up to 50 years or longer archival life.

Security – Archiving to Blu-ray gives you a physical copy of your data that is not vulnerable to online data breach and can easily be stored in a safe or offsite location.

Capacity – Blu-ray discs are available in capacities of 25GB, 50GB, 100GB and 128GB allowing the average user to permanently archive a lifetime of photo’s on just a handful of discs.

Ease of Use – Using REWIND Archiving Software you can easily archive or restore all of your photos, video, music and data in 3 simple steps.

Adding files to your archived Blu-ray discs is as easy as starting the archive to begin with. Using REWIND to store your files to Blu-ray means you can continue your archive, even if you started your archive on a write once BD-R disc! Yes, you can continue burning to this same disc until it’s full, then REWIND will span multiple discs to keep your files safe no matter how many GB’s you have!

We put together a little video showing how to update and continue an archive you started using REWIND.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console has continually increased its hard drive size over the years, knowing that gamers consume a lot of media. How do you make sure you keep a copy of your favorite XBLA downloads/demos/profiles and game saves? Using the DIGISTOR External HDD for Xbox 360 you can copy or move your XBLA items onto a 16GB partition of the drive.

The remainder of the drive can be used for song storage, photos, and videos. DIGISTOR offers 500GB and 1TB storage solutions in USB 3.0 speeds so filling the drive with media from your Mac or PC is fast and easy!

As your iTunes collection grows, you may want to keep a permanent local copy of all your created playlists, XML files, library files and apps! Let’s face it, if you lost your iTunes collection, and had to redownload all your GB of apps, plus reorganize your music into the playlists you want, you’d be at it for days.

There are lots of choices when it comes to backing up or archiving your data and digital assets. While everyone’s needs are different and there is no one-size fits all solution, we took a look at the most common data storage devices used by consumers or professions for backup and archive. Here are some of the benefits and pitfall associated with them.

External Hard Drive: When considering the price per GB, ease of use and ability to quickly restore files, it is no wonder this is the go-to backup solution for most people. I myself have at least 3 of these in my home office.

What most people don’t realize when choosing a hard-drive only backup solution is that hard drives are not designed for longevity. While you may occasionally see a lifespan of up to 7 years, the average hard drive will fail in 3-5 years. If you don’t have a backup of your backup and/or a permanent archive of your data, it may be impossible or prohibitively expensive to recover your files when your hard drive fails.

Another thing to consider is that your backup data really should be kept separate from your computer. In case of fire, theft or other disaster your hard-earned backup would most likely be rendered useless if left sitting on a hard drive right next to your computer. While most hard drives these days are portable and can easily be stored separately, the average user leaves their sole backup drive sitting right next to their computer.

USB Flash Drive: While flash drives are generally much more expensive on a per GB basis, they share many of the same benefits as a traditional HDD solution; easy, quick to access and portable. Flash is also a great media for sharing or easily distributing data.

However, flash also shares one of the biggest drawbacks of HDD which is longevity. Most reports estimate the lifespan of USB flash drive about the same as HDD, depending on use and storage environment. This number can vary greatly depending on the quality; it is important to stay away from cheap USB flash drives if using for backup.

Re-writable CD/DVD: On a cost per GB basis CD or DVD can be an inexpensive storage solution since many people already have CD or DVD drives. The lifespan of a CD or DVD is generally longer than a hard drive or USB flash if you take care of the disc, and keep it free from scratches. You are also more likely store a disc offsite or away from your computer. The biggest drawback is the capacity. It also takes more work to burn a CD/DVD disc than it does to setup an automated backup to HDD and most people are not disciplined enough to manually manage their backups on a daily or weekly basis.

Cloud Storage / Online Backup: On the surface online backup seems like the answer to all your backup concerns; inexpensive monthly payments (or even free if you don’t have much data), easy to setup and automate backups, offsite copies of your data managed by a 3rd party and access to your files from any web browser.

However, when considering an online backup provider it is really important to do your homework, look at the fine print and consider the following:

Cost – while it is certainly possible to enjoy very inexpensive or even free online backup if you have a small amount of data, the cost can grow very quickly if you have large files such as videos, photo’s and music. And remember, this is a monthly or yearly rental fee; when compared to the average life of a hard drive or other backup solution this can really add up.

Bandwidth – probably the most overlooked issue today with online backup. The first problem is actually getting your data transferred to the provider. With the bandwidth available to the average consumer or small business, it could easily take 2 months or longer to simply upload a few hundred GB’s of data to an online backup provider.

Restore – sure you can access your data, but how long does it actually take to restore? With the 250GB data cap limitation of most consumers, it could be impossible to fully restore if you need all of your files back at one time.

Migration to another storage media or provider – how easy is it to move your data to another solution?

Who owns your data? – what happens when you cancel your membership or can no longer afford the service. Does your data disappear?

Is the provider really an online backup service or a provider of online sharing and collaboration tools? There is a difference.

This is not a bash against online backup; this is clearly where the market is headed and some of the benefits may outweigh the disadvantages. However there are still many roadblocks and pitfalls to consider before jumping into a cloud only backup solution. We will tackle many of these issues in future articles.

RAID – RAID may win the battle in capacity and redundancy but can be expensive compared with other storage media options for consumers and small business. RAID systems also tend to be quite difficult to set up and manage, even for expert users or IT professionals. While RAID can be effectively used as part of a backup plan for large users and enterprises, it is not an ideal solution for the average user or for permanent archiving.

Tape – While tape is often used as part of a backup plan for large enterprise, it is generally not cost effective for the average consumer, professional user or small business. With an estimated longevity of 7-10 years, tape is not ideal solution for long-term archiving.

Recordable Blu-ray (BD-R): In our opinion, archiving to Blu-ray disc is the easiest and most cost effective method for the average consumer, small business, photographer or video professional to permanently store their data. While not necessarily the ideal solution for daily backups, let’s look at some of the benefits of using BD-R for long-term storage:

Longevity – a high quality blu-ray disc can provide 50-100 years archival life due to low sensitivity to light and a hard coat scratch resistant material protecting the data.

Costs – the most cost effective option for long term storage or permanent archiving of data with media costs as low as $0.04 per GB.

WORM media– (Write Once Read Many) media which is a necessity for a true archive or permanent storage.

Quick random access – allows you to easily find and restore a single file or files in a large archive.

Security – archiving to BD-R allows a secure, permanent copy of your data that can easily be stored in a safe or other offsite location.

Ease of use – archiving to BD-R is even easier than burning a CD or DVD. DIGISTOR’s REWIND archiving software is designed for the specific purpose of easily archiving all of your digital assets. This includes: Archive or Restore in 3 easy steps, endless archive across multiple discs, automatic scans and updates of archived folders or files, and the ability to use the software on both PC and Mac.